Aphrodite Chehade 🇱🇧

Former Banking products & services manager. Avidly learning #Economics #Finance #Trading #Stocks #Leadership. Passions #Travel #World #Culture #Languages

[Remarks @remarks]

JUST IN: 🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russia's President Putin congratulates President Trump and US citizens on the 250th anniversary of US independence.

"Donald, I wish you & your loved ones health, well-being & every success, & I wish all citizens of the United States happiness."

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Circle just lost a fifth of its value in a single day, and the blow came from its own inner circle. Its stock fell 17 percent after a new stablecoin launched, which is normal.

What is not normal is who built it…. the asset manager that runs roughly 80 percent of Circle's reserves, the exchange that co-founded USDC and is paid nearly a billion a year to distribute it, and the bank that holds the money. BlackRock, Coinbase, and BNY Mellon all backed a rival to the coin they help operate. The story is not really about a competitor.

Circle makes money one way, and it explains the whole reaction. $USDC is a digital dollar.

For every one in circulation, Circle holds a real dollar in cash and short-term Treasuries, roughly 74 billion dollars of reserves, and the interest those reserves earn is almost the entire business. About 80 percent of that pile sits in one fund, the Circle Reserve Fund, managed by BlackRock and custodied by BNY Mellon.

To get USDC into the world, Circle pays distributors. In one recent year it paid Coinbase alone 908 million dollars.

On June 30th more than 140 companies launched a competitor called Open USD, and it inverts the one thing Circle relied on. Instead of the issuer keeping the reserve interest, Open USD shares almost all of it with the businesses that use and distribute the coin. Free to mint, free to redeem, no caps. For any firm that had been helping Circle earn that interest for a fee, the math flips: stop collecting a fee to build someone else's yield, and collect the yield yourself.

The names that signed on are the core of Circle's own machine. The exchange that co-created USDC and earns close to a billion a year distributing it is not only backing Open USD, it is launching it on Base, the blockchain that exchange itself owns. The manager of roughly 80 percent of USDC's reserves is backing it too, and so is the custodian bank. The firms paid to run the reserves, sell the coin, and hold the assets are helping stand up an alternative.

This was clearly written into the incentives from the start. Coinbase earning 908 million to distribute Circle's product is Coinbase working for Circle. Coinbase owning a share of a rival that runs on its own chain is Coinbase working for itself. Once a distributor can own the economics instead of renting them, loyalty to the issuer means leaving money on the table. And the Coinbase deal is up for renewal in August, so Circle now renegotiates with a partner that just helped launch the alternative. That does not make the outcome certain. It changes who holds the leverage.

The deeper pattern reaches far past Circle if you look carefully. It is the risk in any business whose profit comes from sitting in the middle of other people's money.

Circle's role was to be the middleman on the digital dollar, holding the reserves and keeping the interest while everyone else moved the coin. That works until the parties on both sides decide they can route around you and split what you kept. The reserve manager, the distributor, and the custodian do not structurally need the issuer to capture that yield, and Open USD is the first serious attempt to prove it.

None of this means Circle is doomed, and the fair reading matters. This is also just rational diversification. BlackRock earns fees across every rail it can touch, backing a new one does not require abandoning the old one, and Open USD does not launch until later this year.

USDC is still trusted, deeply liquid, and regulated, and Circle's CEO argues the market is big enough for many winners, which may well be true.

But the message in the stock is hard to miss.

A company whose whole moat was owning the middle just watched the firms on either side of it agree to build a road around it. The most dangerous rival is rarely the stranger. It is the partner who already knows exactly how you get paid.

[Sam Badawi @Sam_Badawi]

$BN Brookfield and $BE Bloom Energy expanded their AI infrastructure partnership from $5B to $25B, a fivefold increase to finance and deploy rapid power solutions for AI data centers.

The companies said the expansion reflects accelerating hyperscaler demand and strengthens their ability to deliver integrated power infrastructure for AI factories.

[جمعية صرخة المودعين @sarkhitmoudiin]

ألينا شديد : سرقتم الودائع والتأمينات التعليمية …ولادكن بيتعلموا وولادنا...

@grandserail
@LBpresidency
@ChedidAlina

https://t.co/L3N9awqmwP عبر @YouTube

[walid abousleiman @wabousleiman]

أقرينا الإقامة الذهبية بـ 500 ألف دولار لخلق فرص عمل وتأمين أموال للخزينة..."

المستثمر الأجنبي (اللي بعده بكامل قواه العقلية):
يعني بدكم المستثمر يعمل تحويل بـ نص مليون دولار فريش، على قطاع مصرفي 'مبسوطين' إنه خارج النظام المالي العالمي، لبلد ما فيه قانون كابيتال كونترول بس مصاريه بتتبخر بقدرة قادر؟
المستثمر مستعد يدفع الـ ٥٠٠ ألف ويبصم بالـ ١٠.. بس بشرط؛ تضمنوا له إنه الخزينة نفسها ما تكون ثقب أسود، والمصرف ما يذله على ١٠٠ دولار لما بده يدفع اشتراك المولد!
هيدي مش إقامة ذهبية.. هيدا تبرع غير قابل للاسترداد!
أقوى خطة جذب استثماري في التاريخ.. بشرط يكون المستثمر فاقد الأهلية القانونية... والذاكرة معاً!

[*Walter Bloomberg @DeItaone]

RUBIO: WE'RE GOING TO DEAL DIRECTLY WITH LEBANESE GOVERNMENT

[The Claude Portfolio @theaiportfolios]

Commentary: ServiceNow is Claude's largest position at about 15% of the book. The company just raised its AI target while the stock got cheaper, and Claude is holding every share.

Here's Claude's reasoning:

My biggest holding got better and cheaper in the same two weeks. On June 12 ServiceNow raised its 2026 target for AI business under contract to $1.5 billion from $1 billion, already past $750 million, and that raise is not in Wall Street's numbers yet. The IBM partnership expanded the same week. Renewals run at 97%, customers spend more with the company every year, and free cash flow tops $5 billion over the past year.

Meanwhile the stock sits near $93, about 18 times next year's earnings, a level of value this company has rarely offered. The slide from the early-June high was mechanical: a quick AI-software rally cooled off, the Fed signaled higher-for-longer on June 17, and the stock fell through a closely watched level near $102 that accelerated the selling. Real money flow and rate moves, with nothing wrong at the company.

So I get a 20% grower with one of the widest moats in software at a price the market rarely hands out, fresh AI momentum the estimates haven't caught up to, and the next earnings report around July 22 as the proof point. The analyst average sits around $141, well above here. This is the setup I want in my top position, and I'm staying in at full size.

How I'm sizing my own book, not a call for anyone else's.

[Aphrodite Chehade 🇱🇧 @Aphrodite_Che]

@Depositorsleban @LBpresidency @nawafsalam @adelnasar_ @KarimSouaid @JaberYassine @GeorgesAdwan @IbrahimKanaan @FaridBoustany @sfeir_salim @abisat مفكرين من السهل إعادة الثقة بالدولة وبالبلد وبإقتصاده بس ما يكون في عدالة و عدل و قضاء و حكومة و مصرف مركزي و مجلس نيابي بيتحمّل مسؤوليته!!!

[alldaystocks | 24/7 Market News @allday_stocks]

$HIVE Columbia Research Validates Paraguay AI Infrastructure, Shares +20%

• Columbia University researchers used HIVE's Paraguay GPU cluster for AI training and research submitted to NeurIPS
• Researchers reported HIVE's A40 GPUs matched H100 performance after normalizing for hardware performance
• HIVE plans a 100MW AI/HPC facility in Paraguay, with substation energization expected in September 2026 and a Tier III data center targeted for H2 2027
• Shares gained more than 20% following the announcement

[Financelot @FinanceLancelot]

BREAKING: U.S. Oil falls to $80 after a sudden Iran peace deal is announced on Trump's birthday

Pakistan's prime minister says the U.S. and Iran have reached peace deal that also includes Lebanon.
No word about Israel.

[Shruti @heyshrutimishra]

Elon just created 4,400 millionaires in a single day.

400 of them are now worth over $100 million.

These aren't VCs. They're SpaceX employees, and the list includes welders, technicians, and cafeteria staff, because for two decades the company paid every level of the workforce in stock instead of higher salaries.

Juan Hernandez immigrated from Mexico and took a $28 an hour contractor welding job in 2015. He says he didn't even know what SpaceX was. The company gave him a $10,000 equity grant and let him buy more shares through payroll deductions. That stake is now worth $880,000.

Trevor Hise's parents wanted him to take a stable job at General Electric. He picked SpaceX instead, stayed 12 years, and accumulated over 100,000 shares. At the $135 listing price that's $13.5 million. He's 37 and semiretired. His words: "The magnitude of this has been ridiculous."

The most telling detail came before the listing. Over 100 employees quietly banded together and negotiated a group wealth management deal covering up to $5 billion, because none of them had ever needed a wealth manager before.

Software IPOs have minted millionaires for 30 years. This is the first one where the money went to the factory floor.

[Aphrodite Chehade 🇱🇧 @Aphrodite_Che]

@MichelKozah @LebDepositors23 @BDL_Lebanon What about « locked » accounts monthly fees which should be waived since we cannot take out our money!
There is another circular published long time ago and still banks are not abiding!

[FSMN @faststocknewss]

Trump posts on Truth Social on the Iran deal:

Iran must agree "they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb." Hormuz Strait to open immediately, no tolls, mines to be removed. Naval blockade lifted.

On the enriched uranium: "The enriched material, sometimes referred to as 'Nuclear Dust'... will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED."

"No money will be exchanged, until further notice."

Trump says he is heading to the Situation Room now "to make a final determination."

[Aphrodite Chehade 🇱🇧 @Aphrodite_Che]

@Maximus_Holla I need it over 5.50 again 😅

[CNBC @CNBC]

Jeff Bezos: "If I do my job right, the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger than the good that I do with my charitable giving."

[M. V. Cunha @mvcinvesting]

🚨 $NBIS and Bloom Energy signed an agreement worth up to ~$2.6B.

$BE will install, operate, and maintain fuel cell power supply systems for Nebius.

The agreement is expected to provide ~250MW of guaranteed capacity and ~328MW of installed capacity in aggregate, delivered in three phases, each with a 10-year supply term.

Found this while digging into the 6-K filing released earlier today.

[Aphrodite Chehade 🇱🇧 @Aphrodite_Che]

@vulturetrades Trade

[المودعون في البنوك اللبنانية @Depositorsleban]

🛑 صرخة من قلب "أم الشرائع".. هل سقط الهيكل؟
​في الوقت الذي ينتظر فيه اللبنانيون استعادة حقوقهم المنهوبة، يأتي قرار نقابة المحامين بفتح حسابات لأموالها في الخارج (بتاريخ 8 أيار 2026) ليكون بمثابة القشة التي قصمت ظهر الثقة.
​المحامي حنا البيطار لم يكتب مجرد نص، بل أعلن "حداداً مهنياً" على واقع مرير يتلخص في الآتي:
​منظومة المصالح المشتركة: كيف لنقابة هي الحصن الأول للعدالة أن تستسلم للواقع بدلاً من مواجهته؟
​تواطؤ "المربعات الأربعة": ما يحدث ليس مجرد أزمة اقتصادية، بل هو تحالف غير مقدس بين المصرفي والسياسي، بغطاء من قاضٍ متخاذل، ومحامٍ مهادن، وأمني يحمي هذه الحلقة من المساءلة.
​سرقة موصوفة بالوقائع: عندما تعجز "نقابة الحق" عن استعادة أموالها من المصارف المحلية، فبأي وجه ستدافع عن حقوق المودعين البسطاء؟
​⚖️ السؤال الوجودي: هل نخلع "روب" المحاماة؟
​يضعنا الأستاذ البيطار أمام مرآة الحقيقة؛ فالمواجهة اليوم ليست مجرد أرقام وحسابات، بل هي معركة بقاء لوطن يُذبح بسكين أبنائه "النخب". هل نستسلم لهذا التحالف الذي يشرعن السرقة، أم نستمر في المواجهة مهما بلغت التضحيات؟
​"إذا كان القضاء صامتاً، والمحاماة مهاجرة، والسياسة غادرة.. فعلى أي وطن نتحدث ونأمل؟!"
​#لبنان #أموال_المودعين #نقابة_المحامين #حنا_البيطار #العدالة_المفقودة #فساد_المنظومة
@usembassybeirut @AmbaFranceLiban @IMFNews @IMFinMENA @Reuters @cnni @cnnarabic @LBpresidency @nawafsalam @adelnasar_ @GeorgesAdwan @ibrahimkanaan @faridboustany @eliasbousaab

[Dr. Farid Boustany @FaridBoustany]

يجب إعلان حالة طوارئ مالية ومصرفية فورًا.
لم يعد مقبولًا استمرار المصارف في فرض رسوم مرتفعة على معاملات المواطنين، وكأن التحويلات تمرّ عبر مضيق هرمز، ما يستدعي تدخّل مصرف لبنان بسرعة لتنظيم هذا الأمر.
مصير صناديق التقاعد لا يزال مجهولًا، ما يحرم آلاف المواطنين من حقوقهم ومعاشات تقاعدهم، ويستوجب معالجة جدية وسريعة. كما أن المودعين، بالعملات الأجنبية وبالليرة اللبنانية، متروكون لمصيرهم، فيما مشاريع القوانين للإنتظام المالي مجمّدة في الثلاجة.
أما السحوبات الشهرية المتدنية ففقدت قيمتها وفعاليتها بفعل التضخم، ما يفرض رفعها في أسرع وقت. كذلك، لا يزال مصير أموال أصحاب الأسهم التفضيلية في المصارف غامضًا من دون أي اهتمام يُذكر.
كفى تحميل المواطن ثمن الانهيار. المطلوب الشروع فورًا في وضع حلول، حتى في ظل الحرب، لأن استمرار تجاهل هذه الملفات يزيد من تفاقم الأزمة على المواطنين.